Slopes of Munjoy Hill, Portland, 1840s

Charles Quincy Goodhue (1835-1910) spent the last 20 years of his life sketching Portland as it had looked before the fire of 1866. This is a drawing of the northern and eastern slopes of Munjoy Hill as it appeared in the 1840s when it was mostly open pasture, except for the Portland Observatory, built in 1807.

Goodhue labeled the building in the foreground "Brick Pest House" and the rectangles to the right in front of the house "Graves of the small-pox victims."

The "Pest House" was built in 1824 as the "City Hospital." The graves were those of soldiers, captured by the British in Quebec in December 1812, who died of smallpox.